A look at select Connected Fitness devices
About five years ago I joined Flywheel Sports to help build their connected Fitness Bike which like Peloton, offered riders a live and on-demand connected fitness experience featuring video and real time analytics. Some of the technical details are available on the tech blog and during my RedisConf 2018 and 2019 presentations.
In my RedisConf 2020 presentation, entitled “Creating a Model of Human Physiology w/RedisGraph” I reported on how IoT and Connected Fitness devices can be utilized to transmit biometric information to cloud hosted systems where they’re ripe for data processing such as machine learning.
Connected Fitness remains a core interest of mine. During my time at Flywheel I built a number of proof-of-concept prototypes as wearable technology for connected fitness. Thus began my journey into the connected fitness space.
Many of you reading this are undoubtedly familiar with the term IoT — The Internet of Things. When IoT is applied to sports then it’s referred to as the Internet of Sports or IoS. When IoT is applied to eHealth and well being, a common term used is the Internet of Bodies or IoB. Expect to see these acronyms in widespread use in the coming years.
Throughout the years I’ve purchased a number of connected fitness devices which I’ll share in this post. The list I’ve compiled is highly opinionated and by no means comprehensive. These are just the devices I personally own and have taken a personal and professional interest in.
Lastly, it’s important to note that all of the featured products are Bluetooth connected devices which work using smart phones and in some cases, smart watches. That played a significant role in why I chose them — given my interest in building similar devices.
Whoop band
The Whoop band is a fitness tracker which has the immediate distinction of not having an actual screen display. The tracker is used by elite athletes in the NFL and MLB. The device is worn 24/7 — and uploads bio physical data to the cloud where it’s analyzed by machine learning applications.
One interesting use case is that it allows sport coaches to monitor their players on and off the field. For the rest of us, a key feature of the whoop band is that it tells you which days you should train harder and which days you should really be holding back — it does that by tracking your body’s recovery rate. In particular it monitors heart rate variability. That’s the amount of time between individual heart beats.
The Whoop podcast offers a wealth of insights on the data science of fitness.
Oura ring
The Oura ring is a marvel of engineering. It’s an unassuming ring you wear which contains microcontrollers and sensors. Like the Whoop, the device tracks your overall fitness readiness. Where the Oura truly excels is in its incredibly small size and its best of class sleep tracking.
A really great feature of the Oura ring is that it’s probably one of the most EMF friendly devices on the market. Using the Oura app you can stop the ring from transmitting Bluetooth data while you’re sleeping. As an aside, I’ve measure the EMF signals of various devices using my GQ EMF-390 Multi-Field EMF reader.
If you’re a developer, the Oura site offers a programming API to allow for cloud access to user fitness data.
Smart watches
https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/wearables
https://www.fitbit.com/
I also use one of two smart watches, the Samsung Gear S3 and a FitBit Versa. Both the FitBit and Samsung Gear are particularly easy to program using modern web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, CSS and SVG. What’s nice about that is that if you’re a developer you may be able to prototype your own fitness ideas.
Muse headband
I also use a Muse headband to track my meditation practice. The device is capable of capturing Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and Theta brain waves in addition to tracking head movement using accelerometer and gyroscope sensors.
An important point about the Muse is that it isn’t a toy -despite being a consumer device it’s being used in brain research at major universities such as MIT and Harvard Medical Research -and countless other research institutions around the globe.
I demo’ed a technical use of the Muse headband during my RedisConf 2020 presentation. You jump directly to that demo here.
I wrote a short paper entitled “EEG Data Acquisition using the Muse 2 headband” on how this works.
HidrateSpark
https://hidratespark.com/products/black-hidrate-spark-3
I keep track of how much water I’m drinking by using a HidrateSpark water bottle. This smart water bottle features a sensor that can detect the water level inside the bottle and thus measure when and how much water you’re drinking.
The company has a free app which allows you to your hydration efforts over time and even has helpful reminders — both in app, and via the glowing effect shown above.
Upright Posture Tracker
Then there’s my Upright posture tracking device. In our line of work where many of us are hunched over a keyboard for an ungodly number of hours good posture can help ensure proper body alignment, energy flow, and reduce future medical problems.
Using the Upright I was able to determine that my posture wasn’t all that bad. My wife pointed out an important observation that when she was wearing hers, even if the device wasn’t on (in cases where it lost power) she still felt the device helped her maintain her posture — so there’s a psychological effect at play for sure.
In my own use, I definitely found that the gentle buzzing the device emits was a good reminder while using it.
DIY Biotracking
If you’re electronically inclined, the maker movement has a great deal of resources to help you understand how to build and work with microcontrollers to build your own DIY devices.
This is the custom prototype I built and presented at RedisConf 2020 featuring a device that captures heart rate and SPO2 data and loads it to the cloud. A nice feature of this prototype is that it’s able to connect to a WiFi router and upload data directly to the cloud via Websockets over SSL.
Along those lines I wrote about custom IoT devices here and here.
Do these devices really help?
Together these devices provide an unprecedented view at exactly how I’m maintaining and improving my health and wellness. I use most of those devices while exercising on my connected fitness equipment in my home gym.
While most of this sounds great — I won’t get into the concerns I have about the affects of all the bluetooth EMF I’m being exposed to.
Here are my before and after photos — taken less than six months apart. I’m not saying that these devices were largely responsible for my anti-aging efforts. What I am saying is that they can be useful in providing us with the qualitative data we can use to track our results.
In the end these products are just tools to help us focus our attention and meet our wellness goals.
In the words of the late management consultant, educator, and author, Peter Drucker: “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
